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Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University wants to know about your coincidences!

Ever since I was a child my dad would throw a fit about backing out of the driveway and there ALWAYS being a car coming down the road at that exact instant every single time. There would be no cars coming down our street before he left or after he left, just at the same exact time when he was pulling out of the driveway. Now, I'm sure many people experience and complain about the same thing and I didn't think about it too much until I started to see the same uncanny type of events start to happen in my own life.

So last night, my friends and I were talking about guys we used to like. I have not talked to him since elementary or seen him since him since middle school. I am in 10th grade now. I started looking at, lets call him Jeffery's instagram profile. I had a major crush on him during elementary school. My friends were telling me to hit him up because we do not go to the same school anymore. I did not. Later, when I had gotten home, my family was watching a movie. The first thing I notice was that one of the characters had the same name as Jeffery.

The number sequence will only be apparent when considered in the USA date format (MM-DD-YYYY, as odd as that is). My son was born as 1:23am on April 5th 2006 (4-5-2006). So with a bit of imagination he was born with the time and date number sequence of 1 2 3 4 5 6.

A month ago I went to a concert, which included some pieces played with traditional Chinese instruments. There was a solo guqin, which I had never seen nor heard before, and as I listened to it I saw a battle unfold before me. An old man was sitting in the middle of a path leading into the mountains, his legs crossed and a guqin in front of him. His face was hidden under a hat and as they pluked the strings an army of corpses fought for him. The more erratic the sound of the guqin got the fiercer the fight.

Tired with the towny life I decided ot buy myself a ticket to a bigger city last year. As it was holiday period in the summer I expected I might run into a few familiar faces, yet I still found this experience very surprising. Of all the people I could possibly meet I ended up crossing paths with someone whom I had just met a few weeks prior but who had left a strong impression on me. A few minutes later, at the same location, I caught sight of another, less familiar, person who had been drinking tea at work while sitting not too far from me almost every day for the past 3 weeks or so.

I was one day talking with my flatmate about this very dear friend of mine who is knowledgable in French (my flatmate is from France). I mentioned to her that he often travels to Paris around early December so I had plans to ask him if he was going to leave in winter 2018 as well. This was brought up because my flatmate was travelling to Paris that week-end (some time in end of October - early November). I then, on the same day, asked my friend if and when he was going, expecting either a negative reply or December as a date.

In my early twenties I decided to break free of university life and travel from Sydney, Canada to Sydney, Australia. I went backpacking along the east coast, directing my life trajectory with full autonomy for the first time. I anticipated meeting friends along the way and soaking up each new experience without hesitation. About half way into my travels I was hit a heavy wave of homesickness. I had not felt this feeling before and so was confused and disoriented. As a result this made it challenging to continue calling the shots all on my own.

DISCOVERING LOST FAMILY by Lauren Agnelli of Chester, CT
My father’s side of the family, the Agnellis, were by nature not an outgoing or friendly bunch, so by the time my father died in 1974 at the young age of 43, we never heard from any of them except our beloved great Aunt Toots and Uncle Ambie -- who had always been regular visitors.
So the only other Agnellis we knew of were our father, his two brothers, his dad and his mom, our grandparents. By 1974, half of them were gone, and the two brothers never stayed in touch after grandpa’s death and so. . .

I. Jenna Dewan
1. Shortly (I believe around five minutes or less) before the television show The Late Late Show with James Corden aired on July 30th or July 31st of 2018, I oddly (admittedly without any need to go into further detail) and inexplicably (arguably in my opinion without going into further detail) “hugged” my television set by putting my arms around it. Similarly, near the beginning of that show during a guest introduction, the celebrity Jenna Dewan seemed to put her arms out in a gesture as if she were hugging someone.
2.